Religion: Wise Men from the East

Ponderous and stiff with the incrustation of centuries of bickering and
privilege is the Eastern Orthodox Communionan assortment of 15
national churches headed by patriarchs and loosely bound by a common
tradition of liturgy, sacerdotalism, and suspicion of Rome. Last week,
on the sun-drenched Greek island of Rhodes, representatives of 12 of
the 15 main churches gathered for a Pan-Orthodox Conference.

They had been called together by Athenagoras, Ecumenical Patriarch of
Constantinople, who (by a tradition that dates back to the schism of
Christendom between Rome and Constantinople in 1054) is the "first...